3 million Twitter users

On June 29, 2008 I wrote on this blog that Twitter reached 2 million users - according to Twitdir. Twitter has passed another milestone a few days ago, 3 million users. As Twitdir only "knows" Twitter users with a public profile, the actual number of Twitter users is higher, as discussed in this blogpost.


The growth of Twitter users follows an exponential curve - at least until now. If the same trend continues, 4 million will be reached around mid November. Around Christmas the 5 million mark will be reached. 6 million will be reached around mid January 2009 and 7 million around Mid February. Whatever the trend will be, I will continue to monitor this trend.

3rd State of the Twitosphere in Belgium

The combination of living in Belgium and being interested in Twitter inspired me in the past to analyze the twitosphere in Belgium. The first analysis of the twitosphere on country level - for Belgium - was published on this blog on April 17 last year (this post). Several months later - on August 16 last year - I published an update.

This is my third attempt to analyze the community of Twitter users in Belgium. I particulary interested in the evolution of Twitter usage. Was the hype over or is the Twitter community still increasing ? The first question in such an analysis is the number of Twitter users in Belgium. Twitter locates 1491 Twitter users in Belgium, Twitdir reports 1252 Twitter users, Terraminds (when it was still available) reported 920.

Based on the location-info in the Twitter profiles, I was able to find 2118 Twitter users in Belgium, still active users. Persons who have closed their Twitter accounts are not included in this number. Because the number of Twitter users not mentioning a true location in their Twitter profile is estimated at around 50%, the actual number of Twitter users in Belgium will probably exceed 2118. With a population of 10.5 million people (source : Wikipedia), the Twitter user density for Belgium is one Twitter account for every 5000 inhabitants.

History of the Twitter accounts in Belgium
The graph below shows the history of the Belgian Twitter accounts. The graph is based on the date of the first message posted on each of the public Belgian Twitter accounts. Twitter users who haven't published any messages and Twitter users with a private profile (their messages are only visible for their approved followers) are not included in this graph.



Oldest Twitter accounts from Belgium

1. http://twitter.com/marcio - marcio - first message on 26/07/2006
2. http://twitter.com/zingo - Martin - first message on 22/08/2006
3. http://twitter.com/BuzzWorkers - Ben Borges - first message on 21/09/2006
4. http://twitter.com/onepointzero - Colin O'Brien - first message on 22/09/2006
5. http://twitter.com/lode - Lode - first message on 26/09/2006
6. http://twitter.com/jacobeus - Nicolas Jacobeus - first message on 28/09/2006
7. http://twitter.com/roald - Roald - first message on 28/09/2006
8. http://twitter.com/vpieters - Veerle Pieters - first message on 17/11/2006
9. http://twitter.com/malchick - Malchick - first message on 18/11/2006
10. http://twitter.com/nijst - Stijn F. - first message on 18/11/2006

Private or public
243 Twitter acounts from Belgium or 12% have chosen to keep their updates only available to their friends.

Number of following
A Twitter user can choose to follow one or more other Twitter accounts, called "following". 294 Twitter accounts from Belgium or 14% do not follow other Twitter users. An average Twitter account from Belgium follows 25 Twitter accounts.



Top 10 following

1. http://twitter.com/robinwauters - Robin Wauters - 1.184 following
2. http://twitter.com/sidelinemag - Side-Line Magazine - 823 following
3. http://twitter.com/fotograaf - www.bart.la - 743 following
4. http://twitter.com/thesisters - Anna & Betty - 484 following
5. http://twitter.com/quinze - Denis Balencourt - 438 following
6. http://twitter.com/asimov - Bruno Durdu - 408 following
7. http://twitter.com/bartvanbelle - Bart Van Belle - 379 following
8. http://twitter.com/bwards - bwards LIVE! - 350 following
9. http://twitter.com/nilsgeylen - Nils Geylen - 351 following
10. http://twitter.com/scharre - Johan Schaerlaeckens - 315 following

Number of followers
A follower is someone who has indicated another Twitter account as following and receives all updates of that other Twitter account. 136 Twitter users from Belgium or 6% have no Twitter followers at all, meaning that no one else on Twitter has indicated this account as following. The messages published by these Twitter users are only read by themselves (and by search engines). An average Twitter user from Belgium has 31 followers.



Top 10 followers

1. http://twitter.com/vpieters - Veerle Pieters - 2.616 followers
2. http://twitter.com/robinwauters - Robin Wauters - 1.193 followers
3. http://twitter.com/netlash - Bart - 775 followers
4. http://twitter.com/aguerra - Andrea Guerra - 528 followers
5. http://twitter.com/crossthebreeze - Kris Hoet - 494 followers
6. http://twitter.com/tijs - Tijs - 462 followers
7. http://twitter.com/bnox - Clo Willaerts - 435 followers
8. http://twitter.com/Pietel - Pietel - 433 followers
9. http://twitter.com/mschenk - Maarten Schenk - 379 followers
10. http://twitter.com/emich - Michael Uyttersprot - 373 followers

Updates
An update is the term refering to Twitter messages published by a Twitter users. These are also called tweets. The average number of updates for a Twitter users from Belgium is 373. 108 Twitter users (or 5%) are still waiting for their first message to be published. Below you can find two top 10 lists, one with Twitter users where messages are published in an automated way, the second one with "real" Twitter users.



Top 10 updates from non human Twitter accounts

1. http://twitter.com/dsonline - De Standaard Online - 87.331 updates
2. http://twitter.com/ClopMonitor - ClopMonitor - 48.300 updates
3. http://twitter.com/rtlinfo - RTL Info - 41.563 updates
4. http://twitter.com/radioo - radioo - 37.773 updates
5. http://twitter.com/lesoir - Le Soir - 18.295 updates
6. http://twitter.com/tijd - De Tijd - 12.311 updates
7. http://twitter.com/lecho - L'Echo - 11.527 updates
8. http://twitter.com/belgium_nl - belgium_nl - 10.686 updates
9. http://twitter.com/radioo_donna - radioo_donna - 10.657 updates
10. http://twitter.com/vrtnieuwsnet - De Redactie - 8.157 updates

Top 10 updates from "real" Twitter users

1. http://twitter.com/emich - Michael Uyttersprot - 7.747 updates
2. http://twitter.com/atog - Koen Van der Auwera - 7.614 updates
3. http://twitter.com/Kmeron - FrF_Kmeron - 6.159 updates
4. http://twitter.com/netlash - Bart - 6.058 updates
5. http://twitter.com/Inferis - Inferis - 6.036 updates
6. http://twitter.com/nilsgeylen - Nils Geylen - 4.637 updates
7. http://twitter.com/studio_stefke - Stefan Van De Velde - 4.567 updates
8. http://twitter.com/robinwauters - Robin Wauters - 4.536 updates
9. http://twitter.com/Mateusz - Mateusz - 4.313 updates
10. http://twitter.com/imkedielen - Imke Dielen - 3.724 updates

Tweet frequency
The tweet frequency is het average number of Twitter messages published on a unit of time, calculcated from the first message published. Twitter accounts created in the last 30 days were not taken into account.



Top 10 tweet frequency non human Twitter accounts

1. http://twitter.com/radioo - radioo - 275,18 tweets/day
2. http://twitter.com/radioo_donna - radioo_donna - 270,26 tweets/day
3. http://twitter.com/belgium_nl - belgium_nl - 222,40 tweets/day
4. http://twitter.com/dsonline - De Standaard Online - 212,68 tweets/day
5. http://twitter.com/ClopMonitor - ClopMonitor - 175,64 tweets/day
6. http://twitter.com/fmbrussel - FM Brussel Live! - 152,83 tweets/day
7. http://twitter.com/rtlinfo - RTL Info - 119,70 tweets/day
8. http://twitter.com/radioo_radio1 - radioo_radio1 - 111,43 tweets/day
9. http://twitter.com/belgium_fr - belgium_fr - 101,25 tweets/day
10. http://twitter.com/lesoir - Le Soir - 56,45 tweets/day

Top 10 tweet frequency real Twitter users

1. http://twitter.com/Kmeron - FrF_Kmeron - 22,08 tweets/day
2. http://twitter.com/Tjakkahhh - Tjakkahhh - 21,12 tweets/day
3. http://twitter.com/emich - MichaÃ"l Uyttersprot - 17,66 tweets/day
4. http://twitter.com/atog - Koen Van der Auwera - 17,47 tweets/day
5. http://twitter.com/rrradiogirrrl - Sigrid - 15,92 tweets/day
6. http://twitter.com/vaantje - Thomas - 15,89 tweets/day
7. http://twitter.com/WimProot - WimProot - 13,79 tweets/day
8. http://twitter.com/netlash - Bart - 13,25 tweets/day
9. http://twitter.com/vrxj81 - Johan Vrolix - 12,00 tweets/day
10. http://twitter.com/studio_stefke - Stefan Van De Velde - 11,64 tweets/day

Degree of activity
36% of all Twitter users from Belgium have publised at least one message in the last 7 days.
31% of all Twitter users from Belgium have not published a message for more than a month.
17% of all Twitter users from Belgium have published at least message on in the period between 7 and 31 days (older than a week, but in the last month).

12% of all Twitter users from Belgium is private, so no information on their degree activity is available.
On 5% of the Belgian Twitter accounts not a single message has been published.

Conclusion
The graphs show that there is a group of heavy Twitter users in Belgium. There users produce many tweets, they follow lots of other users, they are being followed by lots of other users. On the other hand there is a large portion of Twitter accounts that can be considered as probable inactif : not a single message or a very small number of messages, no or only a few followers, no or only a few following, a lot of time since the last tweet. Between these two extremes there is large group of the remaining Twitter users.

I was a little bit surprized to notice that the growth of the Twitter user in Belgium has not stopped yet, it even looks that the growth rate is even increasing. This surprized me because of the group of A-list bloggers in Belgium (who were the first to find their way to Twitter) already started using Twitter a long time ago. Twitter is attracting new users who probably do not have a blog. The growth of Twitter amongst Belgians clearly shows that the Twitter platform fulfills a need.

1.5 million Twitter users

On this blog, I have been tracking the number of Twitter users reported by Twitdir. On April 28, I announced that Twitter passed the 1 million mark.

According to Twitdir, Twitter has currently over 1.5 million users. Over a period of a little bit more than two weeks Twitdir was capable of detecting 0.5 million users. This sudden increase in the number reported by Twitdir is probably due to a change in its algorithm, as announced on the Twitdir blog.



Who wants to make a guess when Twitter will reach the 2 million mark ?

1 million Twitter users according to Twitdir

Twitdir finally reported more than 1 million Twitter users, see the screenshot below.



I have been tracking the number of Twitter users reported by Twitdir for a while.

On January 6, 2008, I predicted that Twitter would reach 1 million public uers before April 1, 2008. Around mid February it seemed that the Twitter user base was growing faster than I expected. In the beginning of March however the growth slowed down.

The author of Twitdir announced last week on the Twitdir blog a new algorithm to follow the growth of Twitter users. This lead to an increase in the speed of Twitter users detected, as can be seen from on the graph below.



The reported slown down (around March 2008) is probably due to the old algorithm of Twitdir and not caused by a slowdown in the number of new Twitter users.

1 million Twitter users

On January 6, 2008, I predicted that Twitter would reach 1 million public uers before April 1, 2008. Twitdir reports the number of public Twitter users it has detected. Around mid February it seemed that the Twitter user base was growing faster than I expected. In the beginning of March however the growth slowed down. This reduced growth has continued until now, see the graph below.

If this reduced growth continues at the same speed, the 1 million mark of public Twitter users according to Twitdir will be reached only around June 2008. There is no explanation why the growth of the Twitter user base suddenly changed from 3,500 new users per day to 750 new users per day.

As mentioned in one of the previous posts on this blog, the number of private Twitter users could be around 15%. This implies that the total number of Twitter accounts at this very moment already exceeds 1 million.

Growth of number of Twitter users according to Twitdir

A while ago I predicted that Twitter would have 1 million users before April 1, 2008. The source for the number of (public) Twitter users is Twitdir. Twitdir reports on its homepage the total number of Twitter users detected.

I observed a spectacular slowdown in the growth of the Twitter users reported by Twitdir. See the graph below.



Is the growth really slowing down ? Or is Twitdir not able to catch up ?

Twitter userbase growing faster than expected

On January 6, 2008 I predicted that Twitter would reach 1 million users (with a public profile) before April 1, 2008.

I have been tracking since then the number of Twitter users as reported by Twitdir. It looks like Twitter's userbase is growing faster than initially estimated. The dotted line on the graph below shows the estimated growth, the solid line the actual number of Twitter users. I have no doubt that the 1 million user mark will be reached before March 1, 2008.

Number of Twitter users

One reliable source for the number of Twitter users is Twitdir. Twitdir reports the number of Twitter it already discovered on its homepage. As Twitdir is only capable of detecting Twitter users with a public profile, this number is a underestimation of the total number of Twitter users. I have been following the number of Twitter users reported by Twitdir for a couple of months by now. I made a graph showing the number of Twitter users according to Twitdir over the last seven months.


I want to make one prediction for 2007, more specifically regarding the number of Twitter users reported by Twitdir. I expect this number to reach 1 million before April 1, 2008.



By the way, as the percentage of Twitter users with a private profile is sometimes estimated at 10% to 15% Twitter will reach 1 million users even sooner, probably around March 1, 2008.

Twitter Number of Users

TwitDir has identified until now (October 10, 2007) more than 500,000 Twitter users. TwitDir is only capable of detecting Twitter users with a public profile, meaning that 500,000 is an underestimation of the total number of Twitter users.


In July 2007 I reported that the number of Twitter users detected by Twitdir grew by 2,000 new accounts per day. Looking at the numbers reported by Twitdir recently I have the impression that this growth has slowed down to 1,500 new users per day.

Twitter all over Europe

Twitter has at least over 340 000 users with a public account (see this previous blogpost). These users are spread all over the world. I was able to find Twitter users in all European countries, except for Monaco, San Marino and Vatican City. If you look carefully, you will notice three white dots for these three countries on the map below.



The list of European countries on Wikipedia excluding all autonomous provinces, British overseas territories and British crown dependencies contains 45 countries. There are 9 countries in Europe with a population of less than a million people. The table below shows the number of Twitter accounts found in these 9 countries. Proportionally to the its population, Iceland has the most Twitter accounts, one Twitter account for each 9678 inhabitants.


Twitter has neglected to register the twitter domain names for the various top level domains in Europe. The majority of the European domain names - especially the commercially most interesting ones - are currently registered by other companies or indivual persons. They are perhaps expecting that Twitter.Inc one day will try to obtain (understand "buy") these domain names. If someone at Twitter.Inc is following this blog, they can perhaps still register the following European domain names (if they are quick enough) :
Twitter.al (Albania)
Twitter.ad (Andorra)
Twitter.by (Belarus)
Twitter.ba (Bosnia and Herzegovina)
Twitter.bg (Bulgaria)
Twitter.hr (Croatia)
Twitter.ee (Estonia)
Twitter.fi (Finland)
Twitter.is (Iceland)
Twitter.ie (Ireland)
Twitter.mk (Macedonia)
Twitter.mt (Malta)
Twitter.md (Moldova)
Twitter.mc (Monaco)
Twitter.pt (Portugal)
Twitter.sm (San Marino)
Twitter.si (Slovenia)
Twitter.tr (Turkey)
Twitter.ua (Ukraine)
Twitter.va (Vatican City)

Number of Twitter users

In a recent interview (in French) Laurent Pantanacce, author of TwitDir.com, revealed some figures about the number of public Twitter accounts.

On July 18, 2007, TwitDir.com identified 340 000 public Twitter accounts. On average every day 2000 new Twitter accounts are created, as shown on the graph below.